Calgary Police continue to search for Alvin and Kathryn Liknes and their grandson Nathan O’Brien after the three went missing from the Liknes' Parkhill home.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

Police said Friday there were signs of struggle within the house on 100 blocks of 38A Avenue S.W. in Calgary, where police were called after the suspicious disappearance of three people on Monday.Jenn Pierce
/ Calgary Herald

Calgary police released this image of a small pick-up truck seen in a Parkhill neighbourhood the night when 5-year-old Nathan O'Brien and his grandparents disappeared.Supplied
/ Calgary Herald

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She’s got her cowboy boots on, her trusty guitar in its case. About the only thing missing for Christie Simmons on Friday morning is her usual Stampede excitement.

“I keep thinking about how the Stampede parade is on, the pancake breakfasts and all this happiness happening,” says the local singer-songwriter and mother of three teenagers before she heads to a gig on the grounds. “And this family is going through this.”

Anyone paying attention to the news this week knows that Simmons is speaking about Alvin and Kathryn Liknes and their five-year-old grandson Nathan, last seen Sunday evening. On Friday, police confirm the abduction began with a violent incident in the Parkhill split-level the Liknes’ have called home for close to two decades.

While people all over the city and across the country have been stunned by the mysterious disappearance of the trio, for Simmons it hits especially close to home. Her house is two over from the Liknes residence; over the years, she has come to know and admire a couple she describes as everyday people “raising a family, working … living a good life.”

She saw them go through the stages of having teens with “a driveway full of cars,” spent time with Kathryn writing the community newsletter and later, witnessed a youthful grandmother enjoying happy days with toddlers in the playground behind their home.

“Whenever it came to the Christmas gatherings, Kathy was always there with the turkey,” says Simmons. “They’re just standard, down-to-earth people. That’s what makes this so perplexing, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that should happen to everyday, ordinary people.”

On day five of the Amber Alert telling the nation of their disappearance ­— a case that has now caught the attention of major U.S. media outlets — Simmons says it’s getting all the more terrifying and unsettling. “We’ve got a real mix of people here, with spiffy homes on one end and closer to Macleod Trail, it gets a bit dicier,” she says of her community that has gentrified over the years thanks to its close proximity to Stanley Park. “But everyone likes to think they live on a quiet, safe street.”

It’s also thanks to one of those spiffier residences that police on Friday released to the public a photograph of a green late 1980s or early 1990s model Ford F-150 truck; without giving up any more details, staff sergeant Doug Andrus says at a media conference that police believe its driver may have information about the abduction.

Employing a high-end security system that includes closed-circuit television, one particularly tall home recorded video of the truck circling the neighbourhood a few times during those crucial hours between Jennifer O’Brien dropping off her son Nathan with his grandparents after their weekend estate sale, and her return the next morning.

While this new development may offer the Liknes’ extended family and Nathan’s parents Jennifer and Rod O’Brien at least some hope, most of what the police divulge Friday only makes this crime all the more head-scratching and heart wrenching.

Andrus says that the act of violence precipitating their disappearance would have resulted in at least one of the three being in a state of “medical distress”; also, there was no forced entry into the home, a fact that no doubt will fuel even greater speculation and wild theories on just what happened on that horrible night.

With no suspects or motive, Andrus still remains hopeful that the police will find the three alive. For the devastated parents of the adorable little boy known for his love of superhero costumes, they are words to hold on to — along with the thousands of messages of encouragement sent to their dedicated website, http://www.nathankathyalvin.com/wordpress/main — as they spend Friday out of the spotlight.

Over the next few days, as they await the results of the evidence sent to the forensics lab that will determine who exactly would have been in medical distress, those loved ones of Kathryn, Alvin and little Nathan will keep watching that clock, oblivious to the 10 days of western celebration all around them.

As for Christie Simmons, she’ll be busy singing and playing guitar during one of her busiest times of the year. But the mystery of her missing neighbours will make this a very different Stampede indeed. “There’s a dark cloud hanging over all of us,” she says before getting into a Calgary Stampede courtesy van. “This kind of thing just shouldn’t happen.”

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